In the modern world and current technology, it is possible to scan a document or a piece of text, such as a textbook. Unfortunately, the incidence of piracy of text or textbooks rises as the costs of scanning declines. This issue was captured in a cover story for The New York Times Magazine on May 14, 2006, entitled, “Scan this book!” The author, Kevin Kelly, writes:                “Many methods have been employed to try to stop the indiscriminate spread of copies, including copy-protection schemes, hardware-crippling devices, education programs, even legislation, but all have proved ineffectual. The remedies are rejected by consumers and ignored by pirates. As copies have been dethroned, the economic model built on them is collapsing. In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies lose value. They are no longer the basis of wealth”        
Kelly's exposé elicited “The End of Authorship” by the illustrious John Updike in The New York Times Book Review (Jun. 25, 2006).                “The economic repercussions of this paradise of freely flowing snippets are touched on with a beguiling offhandedness, as a matter of course, a matter of an inexorable Marxist unfolding. As the current economic model disappears, Kelly writes, the ‘basis of wealth’ shifts to ‘relationships, links, connection and sharing.’ Instead of selling copies of their work, writers and artists can make a living selling ‘performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information, the scarcity of attention (via ads), sponsorship, periodic subscriptions—in short, all the many values that cannot be copied. The cheap copy becomes the ‘discovery tool’ that markets these other intangible values.’ This is, as read, a pretty grisly scenario.”        
The problem has reached crisis proportions due to technical and cultural reasons. High-speed telecommunications enable quick downloading of pirated texts while inexpensive photocopiers allow home reproduction of legitimately bought hard copies. Professors are increasingly turning a blind eye when students appear in class with photocopied pages. Others facilitate piracy by placing texts in the library reserve where they can be photocopied. A “tragedy of the commons” ensues for the professorate: individual manuscripts whose legitimate circulation would have justified publication are not published which diminishes the prospects of tenure and promotion. Tenure underpins academic freedom which is essential for unfettered enquiry. Therefore, professors as well as authors and publishers need a system and method to combat piracy which becomes more rampant as the technology to scan and make unauthorized copies of pieces of text, such as academic textbooks, becomes more readily available and less expensive.
Various systems and methods exist that attempt to combat the problem of piracy. These systems use copy protecting schemes to control digital content data or to the course support server onto which a user is logged. Some use digital markers, known as cookies, to limit a user's access to reuse/renewal to e-books or provide security measures to prevent copying unless the user is actively logged onto the course support server. Others use a counter that controls encryption/decryption of copies or devices that track the number of copies and encryption. Another type determines accessibility by filtering information relating to users with requests from users. None of the known systems filter information to a user based on the user's registration with a discussion board, the establishment of which is a requirement for a license permitting citation of the trademarked text in a syllabus. Likewise, none attempts to align the incentives of all of the participants of a system, such as authors, publishers, teaching professionals and students, by using software feedback mechanisms of pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits and costs to the participants.
Thus, it is desirable to provide web-based system and method for preventing unauthorized access to copyrighted academic texts and it is to this end that the present invention is directed.